I like your "pro" examples of fanfic at the beginning of your comment! There are really so many out there--I realized after I posted that one of my examples for nice simple single-author books is actually a fictionalization of a real person's life, so...yeah. Not so simple, almost none of it is.
And that's really interesting, about the role of rumor and hearsay! It's almost like a form of fanon--one of my favorite old shows has this fannish certainty that a character loves ice cream, even though he never consumes it on the show, some of that same sort of feeling. It's true, the RPF "text" is fascinating and nebulous, I can see it definitely falling into one of the later categories! Thanks so much for the feedback, I ended up learning a lot about the mindset for PRF with this essay and that was definitely something I wanted to get more of...
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And that's really interesting, about the role of rumor and hearsay! It's almost like a form of fanon--one of my favorite old shows has this fannish certainty that a character loves ice cream, even though he never consumes it on the show, some of that same sort of feeling. It's true, the RPF "text" is fascinating and nebulous, I can see it definitely falling into one of the later categories! Thanks so much for the feedback, I ended up learning a lot about the mindset for PRF with this essay and that was definitely something I wanted to get more of...